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3 Artists on the Spirituality that Moves Them
with Laura Wilde, Kate Marin & Kelly Kruse
What is it that artists try to communicate through their medium? And what does it have to do with the divine?
Join opera singer Laura Wilde, sculptor Kate Marin, and visual artist Kelly Kruse as they reveal what moves them to create art. They’ll also share how their landscapes formed them, and what their art has in common with the contemplative path. (Hint: it has something to do with longing!)
You won’t want to miss this one!
TAGS
Art process
Sculpture
Music
Longing
Spiritual experience
Beauty
Ecclesiastes
Spirituality
Art
Music
Opera
Creativity
Religion
Faith
"Ecclesiastes" (Book of the Bible)
C.S. Lewis
Brian Williams
Thomas Tallis
Stephen King
00;00;07;03 - 00;00;17;06Kelly Deutsch
Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves here.
00;00;17;06 - 00;00;18;13
Kate Marin
Will follow those longings.
00;00;18;13 - 00;00;43;14
Kelly Deutsch
Within to our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers, embodiment experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science, along with a healthy dash of mischief. Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.
00;00;54;19 - 00;01;18;15
Kelly Deutsch
Hello, everyone, and welcome to our next episode. My name is Kelly Deutsch, and today I'm joined by three artists, and I'm excited to be able to explore a few of their stories and what inspires them to create art. We have Kate Marin who is a sculptor in the middle. We have Kelly Cruz, who is a painter and a musician among many things.
00;01;18;24 - 00;01;41;19
Kelly Deutsch
And Laura Wendy, who is an opera singer, a soprano. And each of them bring beautiful things to their art. And one thing that overlaps all of their inspiration is the sense of longing, which, as you may know, I've also written about. So it's fun to be able to connect with others who have share similar inspiration in their art.
00;01;42;09 - 00;02;01;09
Kelly Deutsch
But before we get too far into any of those overlapping themes, the first question that I'd like to ask you three is why do you use the medium that you do, whether it's voice or clay or canvas or anything else? What is it that you're trying to express through it? And Kate, why don't we start with you?
00;02;02;25 - 00;02;22;18
Kate Marin
I love the three dimensionality of it. I love the fact that to understand what's wrong with this part that I'm struggling with, it so helps me to go and see the back side. Like, if I can look at it from a different angle, I'm going to figure out the problem when it's like you have to go to the behind it, under whatever, like all around.
00;02;23;01 - 00;02;49;07
Kate Marin
And it's going to help me problem solve. It's going to help me find, I don't know, just different. Even different parts of the story. Like if you look at a sculpture from one angle, you feed on one narrative. But if you go and stand on the right, all of a sudden the story can change. And so I just really enjoy the dimensionality of it, even in that spiritual sense of it, too, and just how it can be like a pretty dream size.
00;02;49;07 - 00;03;11;23
Kate Marin
And always an artist like you really understand it the farther back you can get from it. You know, so like it's so tempting to stay at sea with your hands in play, just like you keep working and keep working. But like, sculpture almost demands me more than even with painting. So just stay, step back But at the same time, like, satiate that need for me to just be in the art.
00;03;11;23 - 00;03;29;15
Kate Marin
Like we're painting, we're drawing. There's always a utensil between me and that piece of paper, but the sculpture, it's like fingerprints. It's like it's me in there, you know? So it's kind of that push and pull between what I know I have to do, which is get distance. But then it invites me back in. It makes me touch it to do it.
00;03;29;16 - 00;03;31;11
Kate Marin
I don't know. That's right.
00;03;32;06 - 00;03;51;17
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, that's lovely. It makes me think of just the transcendent and the imminent. You know, I'm going to miss the divine, how there's that. There needs to be that intersection of both and maybe even a tension between the both that there is some separate passion, but there's something really beautiful about how close and intimate it is as well.
00;03;52;04 - 00;03;52;14
Kate Marin
Yeah.
00;03;53;04 - 00;03;56;07
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. How about you, Kelly?
00;03;57;22 - 00;04;19;15
Kelly Kruse
My primary medium is ink, actually. It's acrylic ink, so it's it's much more fluid than paint. It's just like, if you think basically I'm putting ink on the canvas, and then I've got a spray bottle in one hand and a brush and the other, and I'm pushing it with water and manipulating it and moving it where I want it.
00;04;20;07 - 00;04;47;20
Kate Marin
And I think that that's so that's my native. I've described it many times. It's like my native language. I've painted and worked in so many different mediums and visual art from drawing and painting. And I love it a lot. But something about eight dead feet, it felt like coming home, but I'd never been there before. When I first started using it in like 20, 15 I think is when I started experimenting with acrylic paint and I just didn't want to use anything else.
00;04;47;21 - 00;05;10;21
Kate Marin
It's like every time I went to another medium, I just, it was like I was trying to make it do what the ink did. So then like with trying the other stuff for my colors because I knew the ink would do it. I wanted it to, but surface material is something I use in my work a lot to try to because my work is more representational.
00;05;12;00 - 00;05;49;01
Kate Marin
So I'm not trying to accurately represent anything. I'm trying to convey the unseen visual image that lies behind an idea or a passage of scripture or whatever it is. And so sometimes the surface material reflects that. So if I'm thinking about fragility, human fragility or the incarnation, I might use something purposefully fragile as a surface material like vellum or paper, or I may incorporate ash or charcoal, wood, wood, ash into a painting because I'm thinking about what happens.
00;05;49;10 - 00;06;14;10
Kate Marin
How is it really possible that the body can be resurrected from carbon so that like the material from painting to painting, it changes it. Not every painting certainly has each material charts without much meaning but I think in contemporary art, that is something that we talk about and we think about a lot more. Maybe it's the significance of the materials.
00;06;14;10 - 00;06;32;13
Kate Marin
Why? Why was that material chosen over another? And so for me, it's it's from painting to the ink. It's just like my native tongue, but I I, I just listen to you talk about sculpting and it like I want to do, but I would never be able to do it like you.
00;06;32;13 - 00;06;32;27
Laura
Do it that.
00;06;33;24 - 00;06;38;28
Kate Marin
Way. But yeah, there is this, like, beauty. You're laughing.
00;06;39;05 - 00;06;40;06
Laura
Because you're going to try.
00;06;42;19 - 00;07;00;26
Kate Marin
I'll try to figure out anything. That's just the way I've always been my whole life, and my parents just humored me. And but there is I have settled on certain things and I just I had to answer them honestly. Like, what medium to? I'm not sure Yeah.
00;07;00;26 - 00;07;21;11
Laura
So I actually pursued a trumpet first, so I went to college. The trumpet performance major and for me, it was it was just clear I was going to be a musician. And I took voice lessons for the first time right before my senior year of high school and was like, oh, there's something here. I actually discovered in my classical voice making fun of opera in a choir concert.
00;07;23;00 - 00;07;31;19
Laura
I had a solo when I was in and they said, you know, do it in this classical style, make fun of an opera singer. And the voice came out. And so it sort of.
00;07;31;19 - 00;07;32;09
Kate Marin
Was there.
00;07;32;09 - 00;08;01;27
Laura
But it was raw. And I, I had opinions about singers. Instrumentalists do that. But I think for me, the thing I found was with trumpet, I would shake from nerves and singing for some reason, even right when I started doing it just felt like the most natural expression of what I was trying to express. And even over. If I have to speak lines in a show, I, I like blush and I'm like, I can't sound like a normal human.
00;08;02;04 - 00;08;28;00
Laura
I don't know how, how would a normal human say that? But for some reason anything I'm trying any line, it feels more human to me, just like it feels more there's more meaning to it. It feels more natural. And I think that this medium, when it comes to like it's I struggled for a long time to call myself an artist because I don't create I don't write an opera.
00;08;28;16 - 00;08;51;29
Laura
Right. I didn't write any of the music. I didn't write any of that. But I I'm an interpreter of what someone else wrote and the thing that I'd come back to, my favorite part of it is just that I get to tell human stories. That's why this medium to me, even compared to like I don't know, musical theater or street theater or orchestral, you know, I love playing in orchestras as a trumpet player.
00;08;52;08 - 00;09;14;13
Laura
And there's something incredible about being one of many in an orchestra that I miss at times. But to bring together the, like, text, the language, the costumes, the dance, the stage, it might. And that's why when people say, Oh, he'll hear people say they don't like opera. And my first question is usually, have you seen one? Usually they haven't.
00;09;15;07 - 00;09;36;25
Laura
But if you listen to opera on the radio, it's sort of like listening to a monologue from a scene from a movie without any context and then saying, Do you like movies? You know? And and so it's like, I don't tend to sit and listen to opera that much, because for me, it's about the whole medium of it's the theater.
00;09;36;25 - 00;10;00;19
Laura
It's a human story that's being told that the music is communicating and which is one. And it all also we don't make we don't use microphones. And so the human voice in a space is different, which is why we'll get into the pandemic eventually. But why digital productions of opera have not is not our medium, and it's the best we could do.
00;10;00;19 - 00;10;23;20
Laura
And it's great that companies are doing it. But there's something incredible about sitting in the back of the hall and having the human voice project all the way back. But anyway, but yes. So that's it. Just once I stepped into it, I was like, I have no idea why this is what I'm supposed to be doing. But for some reason it just felt like the most natural way for me to communicate Hmm.
00;10;23;21 - 00;10;25;15
Kate Marin
Mm hmm. Yeah.
00;10;26;04 - 00;10;55;07
Kelly Deutsch
I'm curious how you guys would describe that something with a capital S that you guys are trying to communicate, because I find that that art, that beauty seems to communicate that core something in a way that truth, for example, doesn't like our truth, might try to hit you square in the forehead through through the front door with its rational arguments and things and I feel like beauty kind of gets in the back door in a way.
00;10;55;17 - 00;11;17;07
Kelly Deutsch
When you look at a painting or a sculpture or listen to an opera or experience the entire opera, the whole sensory experience that you know, something in a way that someone couldn't have heard you do, they're like with words. And I'm curious if you had to use words, how you might describe what it is that you're trying to convey.
00;11;18;07 - 00;11;19;00
Kate Marin
Hmm. Yeah.
00;11;19;17 - 00;11;21;25
Laura
I we can change the direction.
00;11;22;03 - 00;11;23;18
Kate Marin
Sure. Um.
00;11;24;00 - 00;11;51;06
Laura
I, I think that for me, we've been discussing this a lot over the past couple of days. Because I think instead of maybe using the word truth, I would maybe use the word facts versus truth because for, for me, truth and beauty in opera, if my if my voice is pristinely, perfectly projected through an entire evening, everything perfect but there's no meaning behind it.
00;11;52;02 - 00;12;27;16
Laura
There is no risk taking. There's no emotional, like like the scream in the voice at the moment. It's supposed to be there. To me, it's boring, but like like perfection is sort of that. And so I think I it to it there's something about art that people will engage with that they want. A quick example for me is I there's this musical called Right Time that's about the turn of the century, and it's the white community, African-American community, an immigrant community all sort of represented in the story.
00;12;27;27 - 00;13;02;29
Laura
It was written in the sixties, but it's about the turn of the century. And the whole point of the show is that nothing has changed, that there's still this conflict going on and I discovered this in high school in a very non-diverse part of the country, and then recently saw it again after living in Chicago for seven years and I was sitting there and the opening scene happened and all these groups of people walked on stage and I started sobbing because I realized things that I didn't back when I first saw it, I didn't realize were still happening in the world.
00;13;04;04 - 00;13;29;14
Laura
It still hasn't changed since the turn of the century in a lot of ways. And then I looked around at the audience and saw this very non-diverse upper middle class, white, middle aged audience. And I was like, I bet a lot of these people wouldn't sit and listen to a some a lecture or a politician's speech or someone to talk about the issues being dealt with in this and this musical.
00;13;29;25 - 00;13;57;04
Laura
But when they watch a human story being told in front of them and they feel it and they get connected to it, they're gonna go home and talk about it and think about it. And so I think human storytelling and it's not always beautiful, but it gets to the truth in a way that allows people to think about it and it allows their hearts to open up even when their brain wouldn't want to if it was presented a different way like you said.
00;13;58;01 - 00;14;20;00
Laura
So I think, I think for me that's the cool thing that the performing arts do is people don't even realize they're sort of not being preached at, but being challenged with a story that if they heard it in another context, especially because opera is very extreme, people do terrible things in opera and if you heard about it in another way, you would respond a different way.
00;14;20;00 - 00;14;27;08
Laura
But if you sit there for 4 hours falling in love with a character and then watch the choice they make it gives you a different perspective.
00;14;29;02 - 00;14;30;07
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, that's a beautiful story.
00;14;32;27 - 00;14;49;23
Kate Marin
Yes. I think you said the word that I would have put on the capital that something was connected and you said it in there. People all of a sudden are connected to, you know, and I think it's like that capital is something if I had to try to sort of read, it's like this experience of connection. I don't know.
00;14;49;23 - 00;15;13;11
Kate Marin
It's like when you're in that place even witnessing art and I need to learn to like witness performing arts more. I haven't been very exposed to it, but I'm like loving listening right now. If it yeah. That that connection. And so like for me that, that capital, it's something that I'm like, it's just it's that connectedness to the present moment.
00;15;13;11 - 00;15;35;13
Kate Marin
And all of a sudden your world explodes and you're sort of connected to everything I work with, like, models when, when I'm blessed to have the money now to do it. But it's how I was trained. And that's the thing I love the most. And I mean a connection between someone, I'm not speaking to them at all and beholding them in all that they are usually nude and just the connectedness of that.
00;15;35;13 - 00;16;03;29
Kate Marin
And it's, it's beyond what some erotic experience could give me or some any kind of other human experience. It's just this other kind of beholding connection that it's not even just connectedness to the here physical my hands. It's like all of a sudden I'm connected to this thing that's outside of me and I don't have to like know it like and truth can't tell me it, you know, it's like, yeah, I love philosophy.
00;16;03;29 - 00;16;29;01
Kate Marin
I love those brains in the world who can argue for days about the existence of these truths. And I'm grateful for them. But nothing's convicted in my heart more than like this capital as something connected, like all of a sudden heaven and earth are together. I mean, and it really does feel that special. It's not like a prolonged moments like these drops, right?
00;16;29;02 - 00;16;55;08
Kate Marin
It's like a moment and but there've been enough times that that's happened that you just stay hungry for it and you keep going. And the low parts of our many, and that's like the drop of connection with those moments are just really, I think, what keep all of the arts, all the people willing to give their life to their art going and try and just have that connection again.
00;16;56;21 - 00;16;56;26
Kate Marin
Yeah.
00;16;57;14 - 00;16;58;16
Kelly Deutsch
Beautiful. Thank you, Kate.
00;16;59;13 - 00;17;40;26
Kate Marin
I got you, Kelly. Yeah, I'm I'm in some version of the same idea. But I think one thing that I would say a lot, because I work in the I work with the church a lot and the practice, I work with all different kinds of churches, not just the Protestants that I am a Protestant myself. And there seems to be this perception among Protestants, many Protestant churches that they're trying to like they're trying to bring beauty back into the church, the esthetic especially of especially the visual, because music has always been there, the word has been there, whether not just the scripture, but where the words are esthetic to.
00;17;41;11 - 00;18;01;02
Kate Marin
You know, I think that that's it's important to name that the word apple is also not an apple in the same way that the painting, a painting of an apple or photograph or that or sculpture of an apple is not an apple. It's not the thing. So I think we give a lot of weight to words and and logical arguments that are it's good.
00;18;01;10 - 00;18;28;28
Kate Marin
It's just not complete. It's not a whole picture. And, you know, I'm always arguing that the unseen is as real as the visible world. And words make the unseen visible. I mean, I it's Stephen King and his brilliant little memoir that he wrote on writing says that writing is magic. It's literally magic. You're writing something and then it appears in someone else's brain.
00;18;29;28 - 00;18;45;23
Kate Marin
And I'm saying, I don't want to lump words like it. And maybe that's just me in my context of the church and people elevating the words. So I highly and I we should elevate the word, but it is to an abstraction. So well said. Yeah. Yeah.
00;18;47;04 - 00;19;27;11
Kelly Deutsch
So I love I mean, there's this undercurrent here of each what I would call the spirituality behind each of your professions and the art that you do, whether it's the unseen or changing hearts through stories and the emotions carried through there, or Kate I love how you said there's like this being able to pursue and also invite people into that sense of connection and that those drops of, whatever you call it, inspiration, connection, capital is something that you receive that is often what motivates your art.
00;19;27;19 - 00;19;57;14
Kelly Deutsch
And I find that's also the same thing that happens in the contemplative life for people spiritually. They have some sort of taste of the divine, of some sort of profound connection with with themselves, with God, reality, whatever they want to call it. And that's what spurs them on the spiritual adventure to pursue this nameless something. And Kelly, when you were speaking earlier about the landscape of the Midwest, we all grew up in various places in the Midwest.
00;19;57;27 - 00;19;58;28
Kate Marin
In all small towns.
00;19;59;02 - 00;20;26;04
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And small towns. And I know for me personally, that was such a huge formative experience for me now living out in Oregon, you know, sometimes even though it's so beautiful, like volcanoes and mountains and oceans and waterfalls, and but there's something so beautiful about the Midwest, about South Dakota, those big skies that 360 degree horizon and the rolling hills, the colors.
00;20;26;04 - 00;20;58;29
Kelly Deutsch
My gosh. Like, I mean, I just remember sitting in my childhood house and this is big bay windows and seeing the Chateau Hills in the distance that look purple in the sunset and like, this is this is all I want. You know, just reflecting back to me that spaciousness that I am always in pursuit of interior, really. And with all of that, I I'd love to hear your guys's thoughts on anything you'd like to share about how your spirituality intersects with the arts that you do.
00;20;59;01 - 00;21;00;02
Kelly Deutsch
What does that look like?
00;21;03;25 - 00;21;28;04
Kate Marin
I again feel like these are inseparable for me because my my spirituality at this point in my life, is just not it's not separable from the rest of my life. I one of my pastors said something maybe this was eight or nine years ago now that I first heard this, but you said, I want you to experience Jesus in the shoe leather.
00;21;28;04 - 00;21;52;11
Kate Marin
If you're like every step that you take it's he's there embedded in all of you. And I just at that time in my life, I knew nothing about what that felt like. And so I began to really pursue God. And I mean, at that time, I was a full time photographer, and that's when I started through my study of the word.
00;21;52;29 - 00;22;16;18
Kate Marin
So to really remember that God spoke to me in images, it was always there. He was always speaking to me in images, even when I was singing for context. I went to school with Laura. That's how we met. So I also met a trained singer and I thought that's what I was going to do. But I'd always spoke to me visually and, you know, I wouldn't have known.
00;22;16;18 - 00;22;38;22
Kate Marin
I wouldn't have called it God. I don't even think. Back then, when I was in high school, or when I was younger. But it's like I got all of this context, the longing that I felt when I was surrounded by the Iowa landscape for it always happens in the autumn, man. It intensifies when you, first of all, look outside and the air smells that certain way that it does.
00;22;39;19 - 00;23;16;12
Kate Marin
Or for me, music was the vehicle to the to the unseen unlike anything else. It's like visual stimulants, even though there's nothing visual there for me. And so in my spiritual life, I began to realize that Scripture was just so multilayered, so complex, that it brought up these images in me. And I began to respond. And so my visual arts practice was just born out of responding, trying to find a way to the way I like to always put it is what I think the experience of the esthetic.
00;23;17;17 - 00;23;39;07
Kate Marin
It can be like a feast. So and what I really try to do in my work is to really create like a banquet table. It's not just the paintings and not every work I do has writing, but sometimes there's writing along with it, there's the scripture, whatever inspired it, and it's there's no feast. Or you can eat everything on the table, right?
00;23;39;07 - 00;24;03;07
Kate Marin
You can't you just can't take it all in. But I that's the kind of experience I want to create. That's like faith and the spiritual. It feels like to me it's communal. A feast also implies that I think art, the experience of artists, communal. And so for me, it's it's not even something that I'm like, how can I bring these two parts of my life together?
00;24;03;07 - 00;24;18;29
Kate Marin
It's just like it's it just it's inseparable. I feel like there's a more eloquent way to say, oh, no, that's, that's, that's that's how, that's how it is. And I could do it no other way. So, yeah. Thank you, Kelly.
00;24;21;11 - 00;24;57;20
Laura
Yeah, I, you know, I think that for me, a lot of my I a lot of what I end up feeling that spirituality is linked with is not necessarily in the moment that I'm doing the job because it's it's such I get so frustrated. Like, it's, it's one of those it's one of those things where in the moment I've had very few experiences where I would say I experienced a spiritual moment in the middle of singing because it's not I'm not the one who's there to feel it.
00;24;58;05 - 00;25;34;26
Laura
Right. Like it's, it's I am doing it so you could feel it. And so I would say this is an area so for me and my faith is just my it's who I am. It's lived out in my life. And I would say in the way that I'm called to love people in my business, but I think when it comes to to this art form, I mean, there there are religious faith symbols through a lot of opera and also these sort of big overarching concepts of forgiveness and redemption and sin and death and love and all of these that are explored of the human experience.
00;25;35;10 - 00;25;54;03
Laura
And I think sort of like I was speaking to before, I think this is an art form where people can even if they have walked through that horrible thing, often characters often walk through, you know, there is a similarity in you know, I've felt rejected, right? I've I've had loss in my life.
00;25;56;04 - 00;26;18;24
Laura
And so I think that when it comes to that, it's like if I do my job well, I'd leave it out there and trust that sort of like the spirit is moving in how people are experiencing it. That's sort of the great thing about music. And I have a similar for me. For me that this concept of saying to this longing that we've been talking about that will get and get more into.
00;26;19;16 - 00;26;45;25
Laura
I was first experienced it in like Mahler's symphonies, which anyone who knows classical music, he just it's like every instrument he could toss in there he does to create the most bombastic moments and also the most deliciously quiet and simple melodies. And there's something about it that it, it's like he uses all the colors that music can create.
00;26;45;25 - 00;27;09;08
Laura
And that was one where I just remember sitting there and being overwhelmed by listening to that. And it happens in opera too. But I, but I think it's just something that music has has the power to do. And even, even people who aren't artists or musicians but are just human beings who have stood outside in the fall and stood there and took a deep breath.
00;27;09;08 - 00;27;23;07
Laura
Right. Or have been dragging with the windows down or listening to their favorite song they know that experience and don't necessarily recognize that as something linked to God, but know that there's something about that that's beyond human or logic.
00;27;23;17 - 00;27;24;05
Kate Marin
You know?
00;27;24;25 - 00;27;31;20
Laura
I don't know. So, yeah, my mediums a little different, but I sort of leave your experience to you, and I.
00;27;32;20 - 00;27;33;00
Kate Marin
Smile.
00;27;33;24 - 00;27;55;03
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it. It made me think of almost like a a pastor who, you know, I mean, they do this practically the same thing every Sunday. And I imagine that the majority of them aren't having a profound spiritual experience every single Sunday. You know, it's like Nope, I'm here for you. Like, this is, this is my role.
00;27;55;22 - 00;28;17;16
Kate Marin
Yeah. Yeah. For me, like spirituality and art. I don't know. I think it's well, when my study of art history like, it just propelled me in to make it wanting to really make art for the word like, it just because we're studying all the way back to the very first traces of art we have on this planet, you know, the cave paintings.
00;28;17;16 - 00;28;52;05
Kate Marin
And then you go through every culture, every religion, every faith, and all the way through every century, every culture creating for the divine. And it's like that was also really convicting of faith. For me, because I've always been a big struggler with faith and have tried to lead the church many times. And just it's actually that it's just been nice to of our history and seeing the conviction of every living person that we have documentation of in every culture, it's about God, whatever God, whatever divine but they know it and they, they give everything for it.
00;28;52;06 - 00;29;12;09
Kate Marin
Their most precious jewels go into creating that little piece of work, their most precious pigments, you know, they would even, like, not eat all of the foods so that they could collect the pigments from that precious fruit to make that precious color, to make it that precious. You know what? I'm like, whoa. And I just want to be part of that legacy, you know?
00;29;12;09 - 00;29;38;15
Kate Marin
And I think we create for the time in states that we're in and God is ever present and ever speaking to us, and we're uniquely made by a divine lover. And it's just like, what could I do except to try to give back and try to put some sort of shape or some sort of offering on the table and just like join the legions of people who have tried and like, I love that it's true.
00;29;38;16 - 00;29;56;15
Kate Marin
And I, I worked in, like, representational. Ah, you know, I'm like trying to make what I'd see in front of me and doing my best to like, well, still with some abstractions you can't ever abstract. You have to emphasize something like the law. I'm getting it in a way that might be natural, might not be natural or whatever.
00;29;56;29 - 00;30;23;00
Kate Marin
But like I don't know, it's just even whatever kind of art, whether in music, whether it be an abstract it, whether it be tribal art, whether whatever it's like, thank God for all of them, because all of them try to try to paint the picture of what this God, this actual creator, we're just the craftsmen we're not creators, because to be a creator, you take nothing and make it something.
00;30;23;02 - 00;30;52;17
Kate Marin
We're all working with something. You gave us so much to work with. You know, and it's all there's some things that he created. And then let me just try to craft something else in return, like this dialog with God. And then the other is the other part of it too. For me, that's been really special in the last year, I just sculpted a monument of the Holy Family and its incarnation, you know, like I don't think that I'm called solely make art that's like explicitly Christian.
00;30;52;17 - 00;31;10;01
Kate Marin
Like, this is Mary, this is Jesus, this is Joseph. But I'm honored to do it when it comes my way. And that was it's such an honor for me to make the Holy Family and just to contemplate, I mean, in this depiction I did, Jesus was a little bit older. I'm currently sculpting a little nativity and the incarnation.
00;31;10;01 - 00;31;31;15
Kate Marin
It's just enough for me like I could contemplate that for a lifetime. The fact that this creator who took nothing and made something, then made who came to view with that in all its as a little baby. And then it was just for me also like I feel Mary as a really important, I don't know, model of what that could be like.
00;31;31;15 - 00;31;57;17
Kate Marin
What does an artist look like or what is being a craftsman or you know, something looks like it's Mary's womb. And so I just really feel like that as my kind of calling sort of in this time and space of like, what does that look like to just play my part in a yes to the Lord and let the, the one come in to my sculptures or whatever and reside there the way you reside in the womb.
00;31;57;21 - 00;32;17;18
Kate Marin
Mary You know, it's like, I know that's baby idol worshipers. I they just say, oh, this statue. But no, it represents the actually I also think the divine is in it. And as far as we invite him into it and I really try to invite him in just I don't want that one quick story about my sculpture of Mary.
00;32;17;29 - 00;32;42;28
Kate Marin
My sister's a single mom and I used like many models to make these sculptures and I have like seven different women who pose for the face of Mary. So I really wanted like a multicultural kind of representation of her family. But I needed a mom to pose for me and I needed it to be my sister, just like I know she would know how to make her face that I need her to make so that she can communicate this moment between Mary and Jesus.
00;32;43;14 - 00;33;05;27
Kate Marin
And so she came to my studio. She got her weekend away from where we wanted to be, and we spent time together. And I just sat take the pose, and I kind of explain the moment. This is what Mary I think would be going through. But you just imagine that that's your say. I like just imagine you do whatever and within like 30 seconds, just tears are rolling out of your eyes.
00;33;05;27 - 00;33;21;28
Kate Marin
And these were long awaited tears. You know, this was like a real break. And I think this is where art and beauty and these kind of intangible moments, like for seemingly, oh, it's just some clay, it's just a model. But I don't know, it's more. And when you've let the Lord come in and you've asked him to be there, she will.
00;33;22;08 - 00;33;43;06
Kate Marin
And so these tears are coming, and I'm like, Give your tears to Mary. Oh, she can hold them. And, you know, that's the other beautiful thing about a three dimensional form. She just wiped her tears and wipes them on the face. And I'm like, Those tears are still there. Yeah. Where the sculpture is now, it's in bronze. It's been it's not on that material, but it's in it.
00;33;43;06 - 00;34;07;12
Kate Marin
And the Lord holds it. And if I tell the story, people know that, you know, I don't know. It's just like I do think that the Lord who longs to reside in anything that we want him to reside in. So I think that that's kind of the joy of being an artist, especially a spiritual artist, you know, that we get a little more like firepower to work with what we're trying to create because we're drawing from the source.
00;34;07;13 - 00;34;19;27
Kate Marin
So yeah. Oh, I have tears in my eyes when listening to her talk about this. Yes. That was so beautiful. Yeah, yeah. From the Lord. Yeah.
00;34;20;23 - 00;34;48;03
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. One thing that struck me from your story, Kate, is how much goes into the process of creating a piece of art. Like any of us. I'm sure I could try. Like, Look, I can take this piece of clay and make it look like a person or an apple or something, but that's that's not quite the same thing as creating a piece of art where it's just like, look, it looks like something else that actually exists in the world.
00;34;48;21 - 00;35;13;03
Kelly Deutsch
And I'd be curious how you would describe what goes into your process of creating art, because it sounds like for each of you, I mean, it's this whole production, whether it's, you know, all the practice in opera or, you know, Kelly, you were saying like sometimes it's meditating on scriptures or capes. It might be the incarnation or being with a model.
00;35;13;03 - 00;35;26;00
Kelly Deutsch
And I feel like that's part of what makes art so valuable. And I'd love to hear what value you bring to your art and what value do you find in your art in that whole process.
00;35;31;00 - 00;35;47;09
Laura
The first I can go first. So I so for when it comes to the process, it it looks very boring. Right? Like it's it's getting a new a fresh opera score.
00;35;47;25 - 00;35;48;12
Kate Marin
Um.
00;35;48;27 - 00;36;12;07
Laura
And highlighting my part and then translating it from whatever language it's in and just starting like sort of the painstaking processes of sitting at the piano every day and learning. And I am listening, listening to a lot of great recordings of great singers of the past. And, and so I think that a lot.
00;36;12;07 - 00;36;12;13
Kate Marin
Of.
00;36;12;25 - 00;36;43;24
Laura
Often in I think that when it comes to like you were sort of saying, when it comes to art and performance, people assume that what they're paying for is what they see or like. So for me, if I come to an opera or if I do a recital, they think they're paying for the hour and a half that and they're singing the recital when what it is, is I have to show up every day from every job with an entire, you know, two and a half to five and a half.
00;36;43;24 - 00;36;44;06
Kate Marin
Hour.
00;36;44;13 - 00;37;02;22
Laura
Opera, learn to memorize, translated and ready to go that first day. Like, basically, I could have performed it. And it's another cool thing is you never stop learning because every new role forces me to discover something new about my voice that I didn't know. I could do or that was there.
00;37;03;13 - 00;37;03;24
Kate Marin
Um.
00;37;04;17 - 00;37;23;02
Laura
And, you know, I remember the first time I sang a song that had a high, high C-sharp Rawhide, and it had and I was like, I don't think I have. I, I let's find out. I guess I got to try it and discovered I have this note that just I need it before. So I had to try it.
00;37;23;24 - 00;37;44;06
Laura
And so there's just ever expanding and ever learning and the instrument changes over your lifetime with hormones and age and you know, I it will fully be in its maturity until probably my mid forties and the start of mine. But like it, it's, it's a living thing itself that I sort of have to practice constantly to keep up with.
00;37;44;15 - 00;37;44;28
Kate Marin
Um.
00;37;45;24 - 00;37;56;18
Laura
But it's, it's yeah I don't know, it's a, I love it. I love all those stages of it. Um, and getting to culminate in the moment of freedom is pretty, pretty cool.
00;37;56;27 - 00;37;58;05
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Beautiful.
00;37;59;03 - 00;38;05;03
Kate Marin
So chose it is so.
00;38;05;03 - 00;38;07;12
Laura
Fun to hear about all these different lives.
00;38;07;20 - 00;38;08;19
Kate Marin
Yeah. I don't.
00;38;08;19 - 00;38;11;00
Laura
Know. I can't imagine doing anything else that you.
00;38;11;26 - 00;38;14;22
Kate Marin
Like, but this is really cool. Thanks for having us.
00;38;15;11 - 00;38;22;20
Kelly Deutsch
This is absolutely this great. Laura, I have a side question. What's been your favorite opera that you've performed?
00;38;24;06 - 00;38;46;06
Laura
That's a that's a longer question than you might want to ask by because that'll take too much time. But my favorite opera and I would say it's my dream role that I've gotten to do and it's still my dream role, like I can't wait to do it again. It's it's a Czech opera by Leo Janacek. Called, um, which it's basically the read, the reason I'm going to do a short version.
00;38;46;07 - 00;39;08;15
Laura
The reason I love it is because it's a brilliantly told human story, very deep, dark and depressing, horrific things happen to this woman and the people in it. But the, the way the composer and the librettist deliver after the words that are attached to the opera, um, wrote it every character it's complex and has a unique, complex relationship to everyone else on stage.
00;39;08;16 - 00;39;31;16
Laura
You see these journeys of people and in the end, after going through horrific things, there's this moment of it's not to sometimes operas wrap it up in a nice little bow or they like throw themselves off a bridge in the opera sun and but this time I know it's terrible but this one it's two broken people at the end, the opera like they take someone else off stage.
00;39;31;24 - 00;40;00;09
Laura
This mob of people, there's a silence. And then there's the most stunning, ethereal music starts and there's this duet that happens between two of these characters who've just gone through this together, and they just start to broken people deciding to walk forward and like, there's this incredible redemption that's not superficial and it's not complete yet, but it's this human experience of when you've gone through something and you're broken and you still have to decide to walk forward.
00;40;01;02 - 00;40;21;25
Laura
It represents that in the most stunning, and the music is just lush and beautiful. And it's just not done a whole lot because it's in check as though people understand the Italian when they go to it. But but there's certain operas that people hear a tune they know and they'll go to it. But this one needs to be that.
00;40;21;25 - 00;40;32;29
Laura
It needs to be done more because everyone who sees it, you can't you leave. You can't leave unchanged by it. And so that's like.
00;40;33;05 - 00;40;35;05
Kelly Deutsch
Wow, yeah. That sounds really powerful enough.
00;40;35;07 - 00;40;37;19
Laura
To do it twice so far and can't wait to do it.
00;40;38;20 - 00;40;44;24
Kate Marin
Wow. Mike, what was it wow.
00;40;45;06 - 00;40;45;24
Kelly Deutsch
Wow.
00;40;45;27 - 00;40;47;08
Kate Marin
Next all.
00;40;47;14 - 00;40;59;17
Kelly Deutsch
About Kate. Would you mind sharing with us? We were talking about process yes. And everything that goes into the creation of your art. And what you do is you share a little of that with us.
00;41;00;23 - 00;41;21;25
Kate Marin
So the process is really hard for me, actually. Not the actual like models in the room I'm making. I love the clay. I love sculpting. I love making the fake it's the whole aftermath of actually getting the sculpture to a place where where it can exist in the world in a sustained way. Like it's not going to be deteriorated or broken.
00;41;21;27 - 00;41;37;15
Kate Marin
Or whatever. It is very difficult. And something that I'm I'm honestly still just trying to work out like I've learned how to sculpt. Well, now I have to learn this whole thing, which is being or just like an artist and like, I need to know how to make better rules. I need to know how to cast those things.
00;41;37;24 - 00;41;59;10
Kate Marin
And all of that takes an insane amount of money, resourcing time so, you know, I just like it takes a lot of hands actually to bring a sculpture all the way to life, especially if you're in bronze. There's nine different sections of the foundry that your piece will travel through. So that's like nine different teams of people on your sculpture to bring it through.
00;41;59;10 - 00;42;23;12
Kate Marin
And that's just the bronze will. Then before that, you have your mold maker and before that you have me doing the thing in clay. Then you also have your models that are participating in it. You have it's a big ole ordeal you know, and it's so it's really interesting, like how little people understand. That's right. I loved what you were saying about the singing to how much people don't understand how much is going into this stuff.
00;42;23;12 - 00;42;43;24
Kate Marin
And this isn't even talking about all the time just spent in personal formation as human beings and like students will always be students. We're never going to have it. And that's the beauty of it, right? It's like there's always some some other level to change or some other thing to contemplate or a new technique to try or something like that.
00;42;43;24 - 00;42;44;25
Kate Marin
But you have to study it.
00;42;45;15 - 00;43;23;06
Kelly Deutsch
What strikes me and what you're sharing there is not just the technical part of Here's what I need to do, and all the steps in the foundry and the years of training and formation and your practice, whether you're singing or painting or sculpting, but the emotional investment and even spiritual personal investment in that because you're connecting with this character and its story, or you're contemplating the incarnation and trying to portray something of what you've seen and experienced for people in a way not using words like How do you even do that?
00;43;23;06 - 00;43;30;18
Kelly Deutsch
How do you transmit that experience from your interiority to someone else's? That really is magic.
00;43;31;21 - 00;43;51;22
Kate Marin
And actually, just in response to that, that's the other part of it. It's nothing is linear, right? But especially in art, your process is a linear process. It's not like, okay, for this project, A plus B, C will equal D, it's like, Okay, I'm going to do my best. I know that I need to generally do these things but I also have to show up every day.
00;43;52;06 - 00;44;29;17
Kate Marin
And am I having a good day? Is inspiration hitting or am I having like the worst week or stretches that weeks? And it just doesn't seem like I can make the right mark. And, you know, actually so much of the process, at least for me, is not doing something right. It's sitting in the same room as the sculpture and looking at it and looking at it and just like willing it to be different or like trying, you know, and then maybe I go at it for a little while and I messed it up so bad that any projection I have made, I'm actually just all the way back to the beginning, and I've destroyed entire works
00;44;29;17 - 00;44;49;20
Kate Marin
that have almost been there. And just like for integrity sake, I actually have to start over. And it's just that like it's not the same as clocking into the not knowing that you have this job to do and okay, maybe there's some hiccup days, right? Where, Oh, that can go as well as I wish I was feeling under the weather.
00;44;49;27 - 00;44;56;26
Kate Marin
Sure. Like that's inevitable for everyone. But in art, it's just this whole other thing because it's, it's so outside of you.
00;44;57;05 - 00;45;14;20
Kelly Deutsch
Has to say it sounds almost more like spiritual practice where it's like my job is to show up. And I don't know if like what God is going to do if, like, inspiration will come if I'm going to have a great meditation soon or if it's like every day, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall, like, okay, just let the thoughts go.
00;45;14;20 - 00;45;36;22
Kelly Deutsch
Just let the thoughts go. Just let the thoughts go, you know? And then after like weeks you're like, oh, my God, I have this, like, amazing, beautiful experience. But sometimes it stretches on seemingly forever. And so much of that is most of that is out of your control. It's like you you bring what you can, you bring your skill and what you've practiced.
00;45;36;22 - 00;45;41;02
Kelly Deutsch
But the inspiration comes from somewhere beyond.
00;45;41;04 - 00;45;48;00
Kate Marin
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we have a cold. Yeah. Right for you now. But if you're like in the audience.
00;45;48;00 - 00;45;49;22
Laura
Has no idea that you gotta go.
00;45;51;05 - 00;45;58;08
Kelly Deutsch
Through it anyway. Yeah, yeah. Kelly, will you tell us a little bit about your process I wonder, like, say, well.
00;45;58;08 - 00;46;17;10
Kate Marin
I'm thinking of it. Like, I work in a building with other people and my studio door is like a patio door, right? Like, I don't know, it's you don't see those doors in the interior very often. It's like a sliding door. So sometimes I feel like I'm in a fishbowl. Like people see me working. But I swear, sometimes people think I just sit and stare all day.
00;46;17;10 - 00;46;44;03
Kate Marin
Like, it's like, well, this thing where you just tell me what is the next thing, what I do? Because I don't know that yet. It's a lot of staring so a lot of work I just learned. So to name that woman have risen up the stairs. Yeah. So my process is skin, which is what I'm most passionate about, what I, what gets me out of bed in the morning, what makes me stay up all night.
00;46;44;09 - 00;47;06;29
Kate Marin
It makes me so happy. It frustrates me all the emotions. And that's a big project, which is I've been doing it since I started, but it's like a body of work for me. A body of work is like a very extended thought and a meditation on one thing, and the body of work must have all of the paintings in it.
00;47;07;10 - 00;47;31;05
Kate Marin
For it to be complete. You removed one, and suddenly for me, it's not the whole thing. It's like taking the recapitulation out of a symphony and then that looks to me it's this unfolding. And so I've done that a lot in my career since I started, created a specific body of work and that process usually takes anywhere from a year and a half to two years.
00;47;31;13 - 00;47;51;25
Kate Marin
So far, it could get longer. I don't know, as my career goes on, it seems to be doing that. But what I do is get an idea of something I want to express. I'll just give a tangible example of a show that I have on right now in Kansas City, and I decided I wanted to illuminate the book of Ecclesiastes.
00;47;51;25 - 00;48;20;28
Kate Marin
It's a very philosophical book not linear in the slightest. You can't pick up Ecclesiastes and be like, Yep, clearly we have a section here, we have a section here, but yet somehow I wanted to convey some of the truths and some of the ideas in a visual way to people. So I start with the idea, and then from there, obviously there's one part of the process is engaging as much as possible with the book itself, with the text.
00;48;21;16 - 00;48;57;28
Kate Marin
And then I mean, this is in ancient texts written in a language I don't speak in a culture that I'm extraordinarily removed from. And so it takes a lot of research, learning about it. Listening to lectures. And so that that was like that is where the ideas come from is all that head stuff, studying the word praying some visual things start to come in or I'm just begging God, give me some idea how to convey these things that are impossible, totally impossible to convey.
00;48;59;20 - 00;49;26;06
Kate Marin
And then I enter a process of creating study where usually I have a bounce sketchbook, but then that becomes too confining. And I just have paper everywhere. And I'm trying to figure out like literally like, what if I if I put this very thick dark gray brushstroke down, how can I obliterate? Because my human life feels as tangible and movable as this brushstroke, but it really isn't like it's things like that.
00;49;26;06 - 00;49;50;24
Kate Marin
How do I make a mark have meaning or how do I make the surface material have meaning? And then another question that this is a part of the process I want to talk about. I get asked when I'm standing in a room with my paintings, you know, which one which one would you like to do again? Or is there one that you didn't feel like you you know, you really nailed it.
00;49;50;28 - 00;50;07;29
Kate Marin
It's funny when the kinds of questions you get asked and I always say like, oh, I don't even scratch the surface on any of them. I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I could go paint all of these again and it would be totally different so for me, that's been really freeing, like embracing the idea that I could never capture the thinking.
00;50;08;14 - 00;50;27;11
Kate Marin
Yeah, yeah. It's like just not possible. So I just ask God, give me a little sliver, just like a peel back. The veil of that seems to give me a little bit of the, the thing, a taste of it so that I can and reflect a little bit of it onto the canvas. And so for me, the process is the reward.
00;50;28;16 - 00;50;57;18
Kate Marin
I wanted to engage with Ecclesiastes because I knew contemplating this terrifying thing, which is the fact that I'm going to die. I mean, to me that is a really hard thing to grapple with. And and we lose people. I mean, I just can't I came from a funeral today at some. It was very important to me, and I do the work with those heavy, difficult questions because I know I need I need the answers to them or not even the answers.
00;50;57;18 - 00;50;59;29
Kate Marin
You can't even find the answers to those questions that.
00;51;00;11 - 00;51;01;06
Kelly Deutsch
I need to grapple.
00;51;01;06 - 00;51;23;12
Kate Marin
With them. I need to I mean, that's what spirituality does, is it gives us some tools to be able to face those things in our life. And for me, that process equips me in a way that I don't think I could be equipped otherwise. It's sure the painting's great. It's really fun to get to create an artifact out of that experience.
00;51;23;12 - 00;51;34;01
Kate Marin
But the artifact is means where it's that the present through that that whole process. So most of it. Yeah. Beautiful.
00;51;34;24 - 00;52;06;03
Kelly Deutsch
So we have time for one more question. And I thought maybe the most helpful way to wrap this all up is that motif that's showed up a couple of times in our conversation is that of longing of the same suit and I'm curious around how you experience longing, how the longing shows up in your art form or maybe in your process, or even what you would say, like, what is the point of that longing?
00;52;06;03 - 00;52;09;06
Kelly Deutsch
Where does it come from and where is it drawing us.
00;52;12;12 - 00;52;16;05
Laura
I think it's so this I don't know if we ever define this concept.
00;52;16;20 - 00;52;17;06
Kelly Deutsch
Please do.
00;52;17;24 - 00;52;47;04
Laura
Yeah. And things of which is a German word. And actually Kelly will probably give it a better definition than me, but it's something that I when I, when I discovered this word, it's something that's used in the writings of C.S. Lewis religious writings and then a lot in opera and classical music, especially in the romantic period. And it's this concept of this bittersweet like the way I describe it to people who are sort of heard in this world.
00;52;47;04 - 00;53;06;12
Laura
It's like that moment of sheer bliss that you get when you're driving with the windows down or you hear music and it just you get overwhelmed by the list for 2 seconds and it hurts because you know it's going to go away and you can't hold on to it. But you and you try to but you also, when it's done, feels so overwhelming.
00;53;06;12 - 00;53;34;06
Laura
You got to experience it. Like, that's how I sort of describe this. And I think I think that what is intrinsic in sort of the human voice as an instrument and and like music in general is is the grasping well and art is the grasping for that to try to like hold it, hold it long enough, be it, and be able to really you know, like experience it.
00;53;35;03 - 00;53;59;03
Laura
And I think that like all of our mediums, that's sort of what we're, that's, that's what we're going for. And you can't you can't reason yourself. We don't know what it is, right? Logic doesn't get you there. But in my experience like that, is that is the deepest connection I have had with God throughout my life, is these moments, these moments where I'm like, that is not a human.
00;53;59;28 - 00;54;22;07
Laura
C.S. Lewis says, you know, that if we have this satiation for all of these desert, these like hunger, we have food, thirsty of water, we all know what this is. But if it's not safe, shareable on Earth, it must be from somewhere else. And so it's this idea that eventually we will that is the desire and that we will be connected with someday.
00;54;23;03 - 00;54;42;25
Laura
And and I think that that's that's the goal is to get get people to and they can't even verbalize it. I've had a couple experiences in my performance career where I had this man who was very shy and as a person came up and said he wanted to be me. And he just sat there, held me and to cry.
00;54;43;12 - 00;54;43;18
Kate Marin
And.
00;54;43;19 - 00;54;47;22
Laura
Like, couldn't, couldn't really verbalize what it was.
00;54;48;14 - 00;54;49;17
Kate Marin
You know, about just.
00;54;49;27 - 00;55;16;12
Laura
My performance at like my performance or a moment of the opera, but that there's something that's that's and for me, actually, as I was thinking about the only time that I really experience that transcendent moment is, is I used to hate bowing. I used to hate bowing, and I don't like applause. It's not the same I get made fun of in my business because my values are not long enough, but I am like, there is sufficient amount.
00;55;16;15 - 00;55;17;12
Kate Marin
I said so.
00;55;17;26 - 00;55;39;24
Laura
But I think that there's there's I have moments where I've done this opera. I got to do that in Santa Fe with the Santa Fe Opera, which is a study in theater that's open to the elements. They tend to plan the stages around watching the sunset in the background. And it was where I had been a young artist where I decided to switch voice tapes for mezzo soprano, soprano so it has a lot of meaning to lead.
00;55;40;08 - 00;56;04;26
Laura
And then I got rehired to come back and do this role. I'm in love with my favorite place, and I'm opening night the way the final scene that I described earlier was staged. Like the the two characters basically collapse into each other at this moment of a blackout with like the orchestra and the audience erupted in a way that I was like, it felt like we were at a rock concert.
00;56;05;02 - 00;56;39;03
Laura
It was it was crazy. And I ended up just in tears for the vows because that's that's when you realize you did you you gave them something and they got it. You know, that's sort of the like, you don't you don't want to sort of leave. It's hard to want someone to get something from what you're giving them because you have to allow them that freedom but it's always something special when what you were really striving to show them about this character or their journey, when you see that they got it or that it touched them or that it reminded them of something.
00;56;39;28 - 00;57;01;18
Laura
And so I think that that's it's why we need the arts and it's why we need all of the art forms, because opera is not going to touch everyone's heart in the same way that sculpture will or paintings will. It's, you know, and it shows how individualistic we all are. Louis talks about the idea of a key and a lock that someday will discover.
00;57;02;06 - 00;57;26;09
Laura
It's like being a kid, having a kid, and never seen a lot, you know, not understanding what this goes to. And at some point we're going to be fit perfectly in and be completely and utterly known and understood and seen. And I think that like this speaks to the human individuality and the deep love that we have from our creator and how we were in it together to experience these different things.
00;57;26;21 - 00;57;37;22
Laura
And I think that that's what continues to remind us. It's like nature to that reminds us that there's something beyond our strivings I guess.
00;57;38;00 - 00;57;41;29
Kelly Deutsch
Beautiful things, you smart.
00;57;42;13 - 00;57;54;13
Kate Marin
Beautiful, The question is how longing. What? Yeah. I just really want what else?
00;57;55;07 - 00;57;56;03
Kelly Deutsch
What else is there?
00;57;57;06 - 00;57;57;25
Kate Marin
Yeah.
00;57;58;10 - 00;58;07;00
Kelly Deutsch
How you experience longing. And if you would like to comment on why it's there in the first place and where it's drawing us.
00;58;10;01 - 00;58;37;28
Kate Marin
And I can jump in. Yeah, I. I think your definition of is perfect. I was floored. Homesickness, because it feels like I've been there before. But I haven't it's a no, it's a feeling known, or I'm experiencing it with people, like in a in a conversation. Never having those conversations where you're just like, you want to hold it, you want to spread or something so that you can prolong it for eternity.
00;58;37;28 - 00;59;06;16
Kate Marin
That feeling of being known or the experience of beauty, and it comes in nature. I remember a really intense experience of saying stuff that I had when I was a teenager was the first time I heard the orchestral work by Brian Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. So it's just it's like a long riff of just stringed instruments on what turns out to be just the little hymn Old Church and written by Thomas Tallis.
00;59;07;07 - 00;59;30;27
Kate Marin
And it's so dark and bright and expansive. I listen to it with headphones on, and I remember feeling physically just like arrested by this music, like held like elevated and held in the air, like suspended. I had such a physical reaction. I think I also described this recently. I was writing about saying seduction. I said it was like.
00;59;30;27 - 00;59;32;00
Laura
Being struck by lightning.
00;59;32;24 - 00;59;52;05
Kate Marin
Every part of me was like a light, and I wanted to prolong it and I thought it was in the music on it. I was glad it was just, you know, the beauty itself was the source of the longing. And when I met Laura and she introduced me, I knew the words from like how many romantic parts are titled Season six?
00;59;52;06 - 01;00;24;26
Kate Marin
Yeah. And so I had heard it before, but I never heard it equated with God and truly this concept that that longing points to God who can complete it in its fullness, not here on Earth. So later was instrumental in my faith journey and convincing me that was real and presence in my body that that it was him that was in all of that, that was living through that music and me.
01;00;25;02 - 01;00;56;08
Kate Marin
And that was powerful for me. And I just think that when it comes to that experience, of longing, I will forever be because it's so real and I think it's universal. Most people I talk to have some understanding of it. I think that, yeah, in reading and studying Ecclesiastes so much recently, there's this little verse in chapter three after the really famous poem about the seasons of life.
01;00;56;10 - 01;01;17;01
Kate Marin
There's a time for this and a time for this. Everybody knows this one pretty much. It's a very familiar, but right after that, the author slips in this little line where he says, God has made everything beautiful in its time and He has put eternity into the heart of man yet so that he cannot find it out from the beginning.
01;01;17;01 - 01;01;17;17
Kelly Deutsch
To the end.
01;01;18;22 - 01;01;38;15
Kate Marin
And to me, that is like that be kind of like, Oh, I'm like own not Bible verse for six. I see it right that it's eternity in the heart, but we cannot consummate that longing on earth and that is a it's so painful in a sense. It's really painful that this thing it's that's why we call it bittersweet.
01;01;38;28 - 01;02;10;12
Kate Marin
It it can't be grasped the work is incomplete. We I know my paintings are going to decay and and I mean, they're not going to last forever and ever even the beauty of of a human being with a living immortal soul in them that it doesn't last is so painful. But like that, that that beauty can't be consummated here and now is a gift, because it, it, it should force us to look beyond ourself.
01;02;10;12 - 01;02;24;19
Kate Marin
Or beyond the thing, whether it's tangible or intangible, for the source of ultimate beauty and ultimate fulfillment of that longing and that's I mean, that will get me out of bed in the morning.
01;02;27;18 - 01;02;53;08
Kate Marin
Beautiful. I can't really add anything to it. Honestly, for me, it's really difficult to put that into words. I can talk about a lot of things about art, but the reason I'm doing art is just that. It's just I can't put it into I'm not verbal about it. Yeah. Thank you, God. For giving me something to respond with, like my hands and just trying, you know, and I understand.
01;02;53;16 - 01;03;15;02
Kate Marin
And this is it, like humility or it's like it's. I just understand that what? I'm trying to speak to it. It's like a little tiny scratch at it, but the Lord loves that little scratch, and he just I think she just delights in it every time we get one of those little moments of I've always just thought it was nostalgia and I love moments nostalgia or something.
01;03;15;02 - 01;03;33;04
Kate Marin
I'm like, Aw, deja vu is what I used to think it was. And guys have gotten older and grown especially just like I can learn it again and again. We're going to talk like whoa. And I just had a rush of, like, memories and a rush of experiences come back, and it's like, that is so precious. And the largest loves it.
01;03;33;04 - 01;04;04;08
Kate Marin
He loves to give them and I do think that that other role versus so accurate that if we would see God, we would we would die. Do we read too much of it? It's true. It's like getting struck by lightning, like like knowing it's about to leave like this. This deep pain, like something bigger but in the hurts and it's like, yeah, okay, good that it's only for that moment and good that it's sprinkled through a lifetime, you know, so and and they're so beautiful that they give it's enough.
01;04;04;08 - 01;04;22;12
Kate Marin
Just that 2 seconds, I can, I can contemplate it and remember it for the next year through dry seasons. And I'm currently in a dry season and I'm just like, well, I'm beyond grateful to this moment to just sit here and like, here, we'll try to put words and remember that.